Most cold outreach lists are built the same way: a LinkedIn Sales Navigator export, an Apollo.io search, maybe a content scrape from a conference attendee page. The result is the same crowded inbox your competitors are already hammering.

Telegram is different. It's a channel with hundreds of millions of active users, organized into thousands of tightly focused niche communities - and almost no one is treating it as a lead source. Here's how to build a cold outreach list from Telegram in four steps:

Find the right Telegram groups for your niche using directories and search tricks
Extract the member list including names, usernames, and phone numbers using Telegram Scrap
Filter and segment your CSV by contact availability and intent signals
Send outreach via Telegram DM or email, using message templates built to get replies

The rest of this guide breaks each step into detail, covers compliance, and gives you the templates.

Why Telegram Is an Underrated Outreach Channel

Let's establish the opportunity before we get tactical.

Telegram has over 950 million monthly active users as of 2024 - a number that places it firmly alongside LinkedIn (1B) and far ahead of platforms most sales teams treat as primary channels. But there's a structural difference that makes Telegram genuinely valuable for outreach: Telegram users self-sort into niche groups by interest, profession, and intent.

A LinkedIn group for "SaaS Founders" has 200,000 members and 12 posts per year. A Telegram group for SaaS founders in Southeast Asia might have 8,000 members and 300 messages per day. The Telegram group is alive. The members are engaged. And crucially, they joined voluntarily to talk about something specific - which is a buying signal in disguise.

Compare the competitive landscape:

Email outreach: Reply rates of 1–3% are considered good. Inboxes are saturated. Spam filters are increasingly aggressive.
LinkedIn cold DM: Connection request acceptance rates have dropped. InMail costs money and feels formal.
Telegram cold DM: No gatekeeping. No inbox algorithm. The message arrives directly. Reply rates in well-targeted campaigns consistently run 10–25%.

The reason more people haven't built outreach lists from Telegram is that it requires more setup than a database export - specifically, you need to extract the member data. That's exactly what this guide covers.

Step 1: Find the Right Groups to Target

The quality of your outreach list depends almost entirely on the quality of the groups you target. Here's how to find the right ones.

Use Telegram Directories

tlgrm.eu - a searchable index of public Telegram groups and channels by category and language
tgstat.com - analytics for Telegram channels and groups; search by topic, country, and subscriber count
telegram-list.com - categorized directory with group invite links

These directories let you filter by niche, language, and size. A B2B SaaS company targeting European startups can find groups in English, French, and German within minutes.

Search Google

One of the most effective patterns for finding active, non-indexed groups:

site:t.me [your niche keyword]

For example: site:t.me dropshipping or site:t.me "real estate investors". This surfaces public group links that Telegram's own search doesn't always show, especially older or more specialized communities.

Use Telegram's Native Search with Tricks

Telegram's in-app search is limited - it prioritizes channels over groups and favors large accounts. Workarounds:

Search for a broad term, then look at the members of the groups you find and check what other groups they're in (visible on their public profiles)
Look at the pinned messages and group descriptions for links to related communities
Ask in one group if there are sister groups - community admins almost always maintain a network

Qualify Before You Extract

Not every group is worth an extraction slot from your monthly plan. Check:

Before spending an extraction slot from your monthly plan, check:

Activity: Is the last message in the last 24 hours? A dead group is a dead list.
Member quality: Scroll through recent messages. Are they written by humans with opinions, or is it a link-dump bot farm?
Group size: 1,000–50,000 members is the sweet spot. Below that, there's not enough volume. Above 50,000, the signal-to-noise ratio drops sharply.
Relevance: Does the conversation match your ICP (ideal customer profile)?

Step 2: Extract the Member List with Telegram Scrap

Once you've identified your target groups, the extraction step is straightforward.

Telegram Scrap uses the official Telegram MTProto API - the same protocol used by Telegram's own apps. This means the data you receive is accurate and complete, not a brittle HTML scrape that breaks every time Telegram updates its web interface.

Two extraction types are available on all plans:

Admin Extract: Returns only the group's admins and owners - names, usernames, and roles. Use this when you want decision-makers only (see the related guide: Telegram Admin Extractor).
Full Member Extract: Returns up to 10,000 members with name, username, and phone number (where available). Use this for volume outreach campaigns.

How to run an extraction:

Go to Telegram Scrap and select your plan
Paste the group link (e.g., t.me/groupname) or username
Authenticate with your Telegram account - a one-time step that uses Telegram's official login flow
Wait a few minutes while the extraction runs
Download your CSV

For a group with 8,000 members, the full extract returns a CSV with up to 8,000 rows. Depending on the group's privacy settings and member profile visibility, you'll typically see phone numbers on 15–40% of members and public usernames on 50–70%.

Step 3: Filter and Segment Your CSV

A raw member list needs cleaning before it becomes an outreach list.

Filter by Contact Availability

Open your CSV in Excel, Google Sheets, or any data tool. Sort and filter:

Has username: These members are directly reachable via Telegram DM - no phone number needed. Prioritize these for Telegram-based outreach.
Has phone number: These members can be reached via SMS, WhatsApp (if they use the same number), or looked up in email finders. A phone number is the most reliable identifier for cross-platform enrichment.
Name only (no username, no phone): These contacts can't be reached directly without knowing their user ID. Lower priority unless you're enriching against a database.

Segment by Niche and Intent

If you've extracted from multiple groups, tag each row with the source group name. This lets you:

Personalize your opener ("I noticed you're in [Group Name]...")
Route to different sequences (a crypto group member gets a different pitch than a SaaS group member)
Measure reply rates by group to identify which communities have the best ROI

Deduplicate Across Groups

If you're extracting from five groups in the same niche, many of the most active community members will appear in all five. Use Excel's "Remove Duplicates" on the username or user ID column. Reaching the same person five times from different group angles is annoying, not impressive.

Step 4: Connect to Your Outreach Tools

With a clean, segmented CSV, you have several deployment options.

Manual Telegram DM

For lists under 200 contacts, manual DM is the highest-converting approach. Search the username in Telegram, send the message, and log the response in a simple spreadsheet. Manual DM has no sending limits if you pace yourself (20–30 messages per day on a fresh account, 50–100 on an aged account with activity history).

Email Outreach via Instantly.ai or Lemlist

If your CSV contains phone numbers or you've enriched it with emails via Apollo.io or Hunter.io:

Import the enriched CSV into Instantly.ai or Lemlist
Build a sequence with a Telegram-specific first line: "I found you through the [Group Name] Telegram community..."
This single personalization line - referencing a community the recipient actually chose to join - lifts reply rates significantly compared to generic email openers

Bulk Telegram Outreach Tools

For larger volumes, tools like KleverSend or similar Telegram automation platforms allow CSV-based message sending. These carry more risk (Telegram can flag accounts that send identical messages at volume) and require careful warming and template variation. Use with caution and always test on a small batch first.

Message Templates That Don't Get Flagged as Spam

Telegram's spam detection is behavioral, not just keyword-based. Short, varied, personalized messages sent at human pace don't trigger it. Identical 300-word pitches sent to 500 people in an hour do.

Template 1: The Community Reference (Best for general B2B)

"Hey [Name] - found you in [Group Name]. I run [brief description of what you do] and thought there might be a fit. Worth a quick chat? Happy to share a bit more context first if helpful."

Template 2: The Compliment + Ask (Best for creator/influencer outreach)

"Hey - I came across your group [Group Name] and genuinely think you've built something sharp. We work with community owners in [niche] and have a project that might be interesting for your audience. 5-minute call this week?"

Template 3: The Direct Value Lead (Best for SaaS / tools)

"Hey [Name] - saw you in the [Group Name] group. We built [tool] specifically for people doing [thing they're clearly doing]. Thought it might be relevant. [Link or one sentence value prop]. Let me know if you want to take a look."

Rules that keep you out of spam:

Always use first name
Reference the group - it signals you know who they are
Keep it under 100 words for first message
Never attach images, files, or links in the first message on cold outreach
Wait for a reply before sending a follow-up

Compliance: What You Can and Can't Do

This is the section most guides skip. Don't skip it.

What you can do:

Extract publicly available Telegram data (names, usernames) from groups you are a member of
Contact people who have a public username - that is, people who have chosen to be findable and messageable
Reference a shared community context in your outreach
Store the data for internal business use

What you need to be careful about:

GDPR (EU): If you're targeting EU residents, you need a legitimate interest basis for processing their data. B2B outreach to professionals in relevant contexts generally qualifies, but document your rationale and honor opt-outs immediately.
Phone numbers: A phone number in a Telegram profile does not constitute consent to be marketed to via SMS or WhatsApp. Treat phone numbers as enrichment identifiers, not direct marketing channels, unless you have explicit consent.
Spam at scale: Sending identical unsolicited messages at high volume violates both Telegram's Terms of Service and anti-spam laws in most jurisdictions. Personalize, pace, and give people an easy way to say not interested.
Sensitive groups: Do not extract from groups related to health conditions, political affiliations, religion, or other sensitive categories. The legal exposure is severe and the ethical case is weak.

The practical rule: if you'd be comfortable explaining your outreach process to the person you're messaging, you're probably fine.

FAQ

Q: How many contacts can I get from a single Telegram group? The Full Member Extract returns up to 10,000 members per group. Extractions are included in your monthly plan quota. For very large groups (100k+ members), Telegram's API caps what's accessible to standard clients - but 10,000 targeted contacts from one community is already a substantial outreach list.

Q: Do I need a special Telegram account to run extractions? No. Telegram Scrap uses your existing Telegram account via the official API. You don't need a developer account, a bot token, or any technical setup beyond logging in.

Q: What's a realistic reply rate for Telegram cold outreach? For well-targeted, personalized outreach to members of relevant communities, expect 10–20% reply rates. This is 5–10x higher than comparable cold email campaigns, primarily because Telegram DMs don't have spam filters and the community context provides a warm reference point.

Q: Can I use the extracted data in my CRM? Yes. The CSV format from Telegram Scrap imports directly into Salesforce, HubSpot, Airtable, Notion, and any other CRM or spreadsheet tool. Tag contacts with source group and extraction date for clean tracking.

Q: What if the group is private? You can extract from private groups as long as you are a member. If you're not a member, you'll need to join the group first - either organically or by obtaining an invite link. Telegram Scrap cannot extract data from groups you don't have access to.

Build Your First Outreach List Today

Cold outreach works when the list is good and the message is relevant. Telegram gives you both: communities of people who've already declared their interests, combined with direct contact methods that bypass every filter that makes email and LinkedIn harder every year.

The total cost to test this approach: one group extraction (included in your plan), one afternoon of list cleanup, and 20 well-written DMs. Start with a 30-day free trial - no charge until the trial ends.

Build your first outreach list → Telegram Scrap